In the midst of an American-led push for nuclear disarmament, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has labeled the United States an “atomic criminal,” the U.S. being the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, called for an independent body to oversee nuclear disarmament.

We like to believe—and newspapers and television like us to believe—that the battle for Iran is being fought on the streets of Tehran, of Isfahan, of Najafabad. Untrue. The future of the nation is being decided in Qom, among the clerical leaders of Iranian Shia Islam; and one of the most influential of them—perhaps the closest of all the ayatollahs to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—is silent.

Members of the Iranian public aren’t the only ones registering their displeasure about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s impending second term. On Monday, as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei formally gave his endorsement to Ahmadinejad, some key members of Iran’s political elite were conspicuously absent from the ceremony.

You don’t overthrow Islamic revolutions with car headlights. And definitely not with candles. Peaceful protest might have served Gandhi well, but the supreme leader’s Iran is not going to worry about a few thousand demonstrators on the streets, even if they do cry “Allahu Akbar” from their rooftops every night.

Protesters defied the supreme leader’s threat of a crackdown and marched Saturday in the streets of Tehran, where they were reportedly met with tear gas and gunfire. Foreign media were unable to verify state television reports that 10 people were killed in Saturday’s confrontation between police and “terrorists.”

Providing a sharp retort to President Bush’s Iraq war update speech on Thursday, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei laid into Bush for his war policy and his administration’s aggressive stance toward Iran during Friday prayers, opining that Bush will be tried in an international court for his part in the Iraq debacle.